Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
You don’t need to be coy, Roy.
Danny’s expression changes from hopefulness to dead-eyed exhaustion. Declan Lynch cocks the hammers on his impressive-looking handguns. Old-school is my bru. I like it.
“Listen here, you feckin’ cunts. The only reason my lads aren’t picking up tiny pieces of your brains off the floor right now is because I don’t like killing people when I don’t know why I’m doing it. So. To be very clear: I’ll ask once more. Who are ye? And what are ye doing here?”
Danny shouts out before I can respond. “We don’t want any trouble!”
(Oh, for fok’s sake, Danny.)
You just listen to me.
“Ye don’t? Well, then, you’re sure as feck going about things the wrong way!”
“We’re just looking for Brasil!”
The mighty king in the sky above us betrays himself for just the slightest of moments, squinting to focus on who’s shouting up to him. It shows his age. And when he stops squinting and realizes who’s down below, his Irish eyes are most definitely not smiling. “Fortnight? Danny Fortnight? That you? Feck are you doing, boyo?”
Hop on the bus, Gus.
“Declan, we just need to find Brasil. That’s all. We need to—”
You don’t need to discuss much.
“He killed my brother and took my daughter and so now we need to find him, torture him, keep him alive long enough to torture him a bit more, and then eventually kill him slowly over probably four or five days so that his trip to Hell is as unpleasant as possible,” I say. “So, be a good ouballie and tell us where he is, would you please?”
I’ve never been to space. Never had an interest. That’s for other South African billionaires to worry over. But I have heard that there is no sound in space. At all. It is a vacuum of sorts, as I understand it. After my forthright and honest description of what we’re going to do to Brasil Lynch when we find him, the room sounds like how I would imagine it must sound inside the deepest, darkest of black holes.
Dead. Silence.
I would say “pin-drop silent,” but that would suggest that anything might be moving at all. It’s not. Not a muscle. Not an atom. It’s the kind of tension that causes blood pressure to rise and makes hearts explode. That’s what’s happening in the room.
But inside my head, the music keeps playing.
Just drop off the key, Lee.
After a second or two that feels like a few million years, the air starts to slowly fill back into everyone’s lungs. Declan lowers his head and looks down at me with a combination of sleepiness and malice, which is a hard combination to pull off and can generally only be achieved by the sincerest of villains. I’m grateful for this look. Because in about five seconds, he will cease to exist as a corporeal being and it’s oddly comforting to know that he will deserve it.
“Boyo, I know I said I like to know who I’m killing and why, and I don’t know who you are exactly, but I know enough to know I don’t feckin’ like you. So, in your case, I’m happy to make an exception.”
He now levels both barrels at me. And I smile. And it’s the smile that’s probably the difference between life and death for me. It has been many, many times.
It was one of the lone bits of wisdom my late father bestowed upon me which has proven to be useful over lo these many years, and not just blustery bullshit.
“If, in the face of mortal danger, you look like you’re not frightened, it will cause the other oke to take up that fear in compensation. And then you will hold the advantage and he will be made weak and vulnerable.”
I.e. when direct and imminent destruction is staring you in the face, it rarely expects to be greeted with a welcoming grin. It confuses direct and imminent destruction. Because direct and imminent destruction is a brutal fokker, but it is not conversant in nuance.
And get yourself free, sings on dear old Paul Simon inside my too-clever-by-half brain. And as the last line of the chorus rings in my head, I close my eyes—confident in the unseen, inexplicable connection I share with Danny and Christine—allow my smile to widen, hear a pop… and when I open my eyes again, see that the shock of ponytailed red and white hair attached to the cranium of the man whose intention it is to kill me has been replaced by a puff of red mist where his head used to be.
CHAPTER FOUR
How did I know when it was time to pull the trigger, exactly?
When it comes to Alec and Danny, I can always tell. I can feel them. Even when I couldn’t remember who I was or what I was doing or why I was in a blacked-out room with weapons under the floorboards, I could feel them. Even when Danny and I were alone, after Alec went off the side of that cliff and we weren’t sure if he was alive or dead… I was sure. I knew. I could sense his life energy. Out there. Somewhere. Still pulsing. Heart still beating.